| Emotion psych verb, a significant subclass of psych verbs, refers to those psych verbswhich can express people’s positive or negative state of mind towards external stimuli. Basedon English and Chinese language facts, this thesis aims to compare English and Chineseemotion psych verbs from the perspective of cognitive semantics, especially frame semanticsand image schema. It is hoped that this thesis can help present a feasible researchmethodology for the study of the subcategories of psych verbs, making a contribution toEnglish and Chinese language teaching and communication across language andstrengthening the objectivity and scientificalness of psych verbs research.Through the research, we come to the following conclusions: Firstly, English andChinese emotion psych verb is a kind of psych verb which shares the semantic features[+describing human beings],[+emotional process] and [+emotional state]. Based on theirsemantic contents and syntactic representations, English and Chinese emotion psych verbscan be divided to several subcategories or subclasses with reference to features of strength,polarity and possible values. Emotion psych verbs reveal obvious semantic hierarchies, whichcan be basically divided into positive, semi-positive, neutral, semi-negative and negative.Secondly, the semantic frames of emotion psych verbs are language descriptions of emotionalevents and scenes. The frame semantic analysis of emotion psych verbs contains three levels:emotion domain, emotion frame and emotion psych verbs. FrameNet and HowNet are consulted for the classification of English and Chinese emotion psych verbs, and some framesare adjusted and completed based on frame net to be suitable for emotion psych verbs better.English psych verbs are parted into seven frames in terms of subclasses, and each onecontains one or more subclasses. The non-core frame elements in English emotion psychverbs are more than that in Chinese emotion psych verbs. Chinese emotion psych verbs can bedivided into eight frames. Lexical units in the first four frames are reorganization of verbsfrom various subclasses, and the later four frames are defined in terms of each subclass.Chinese frames can be classified into two kinds: complement-taking verbs frame andEmotion-predicating verbs frame. Thirdly, the semantic contents of English and Chineseemotion psych verbs are distinctive, but they are overlapping to some extent. Emotion psychverbs enjoy three polarities, negative polarity, neutral polarity and negative polarity, andsemantic contents of each subclass construct a full continuum in cognition. While Englishemotion psych verbs can express causative meanings individually, Chinese emotion verbsneed to add another causative verb to convey causative meanings. The frames and syntacticrepresentations are not corresponding in English and Chinese emotion psych verbs. Finally,emotional images are the projection of emotional conceptual structures, and the schemas ofemotional images are mainly constructed and interpreted by emotion psych verbs. English andChinese emotion psych verbs mainly construct Path Schema and Force Schema. According tothe polarity of emotion psych verbs and the possibility of human emotion and psychology,Path Schemas of emotion psych verbs have three variants, Straight Line Path Schema,Continuing Path Schema and Stop-Away Path Schema. Besides, Force Schema is anotherimportant schema constructed by emotion psych verbs to convey emotional languagestructures. Physical and psychological force schemas are two common force schemas ofemotion psych verbs. In general, image schemas of English and Chinese emotion psych verbsshare the same features and regular patterns. |
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